


Whither

by Daephraelle



Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Hurt, Internalized Homophobia, M/M, Pining, Rejection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-13
Updated: 2016-04-13
Packaged: 2018-06-01 23:52:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 14,914
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6541885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Daephraelle/pseuds/Daephraelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>John learns that he can't live without Rodney, but does that mean that he can live with what Rodney wants from him? As he and Rodney drift further apart, can John find his way back to his best friend, and will friendship really be enough for either of them in the end?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Whither

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Ballroom Bliss](https://archiveofourown.org/works/6536737) by [velocitygrass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/velocitygrass/pseuds/velocitygrass). 



“I can’t lose my sister, John.”

John. God, why did he have to call him John, remind him that they were more than just colleagues, make it so much harder for him to stay calm, professional. Unemotional.

“No,” John replied, and watched Rodney’s world shatter. “I’m sorry, no.”

Even when he figured out a way to save the day, to convince a man to kill himself, even when everyone was safe again, and Rodney was thanking him in one breath and reminding him of just how far he’d gone to save Rodney’s life in the next, John couldn’t quite dislodge the splinter of feeling that had speared into his chest when he’d refused to let Rodney die. Because that was the problem, wasn’t it? In a lifetime full of lost friends and violent deaths, he’d finally found the one person that he couldn’t let go of. Now John knew just how far he was willing to go. Across time, and space, and multiverses he would keep Rodney alive, damn the consequences.

And didn’t that just scare the shit out of him.

**~O~**

“Ugh. Rehydrated pork-like products _again_?”

It wasn’t a Thursday unless Rodney was bitching about the ‘sausages’. Cue the MRE lament in three… two… one…

“I would honestly rather have an MRE for lunch than this… whatever this actually is. Why can’t I just have the beef enchiladas, or the chili with beans?”

John rolled his eyes. “The table thanks you for not having the chili with beans, Rodney, now eat your damn lunch, and for the love of god, keep your mouth shut when you chew.”

Rodney flushed an unbecoming shade of pink, his mouth stuttering open and closed as he unsuccessfully fished for a response.

“Yeah, pretty much the opposite of that,” John said, jabbing a finger at Rodney’s face before returning to his own rehydrated pork-like products.

“You watch me eat?” Rodney managed to ask after a few moments of blessed silence, although by the look of mortification on his face, it wasn’t what he’d meant to say. John could feel something ugly crawling up inside him, as though he wanted to reach over and cram those words back into Rodney’s mouth, rather than admit that, yes he watched Rodney, why the hell did he think he always sat on the opposite side of the table to him? Instead he was blessfully, _blissfully_ cut off by Teyla.

“We _all_ watch you eat, Rodney. Sadly, it is rather… unavoidable when sitting at the same table as you.”

“Stop talking with your mouth full,” Ronon added, sparing a glance from his own meal to smirk at Rodney.

“I don’t… I can’t… It’s not as if—”

“Stop. Talking.” Ronon repeated, and Rodney harrumphed, put out.

The rest of their meal passed in relative silence, something that John was eternally grateful for, but that lingering sense of disquiet stayed with him, not helped by the occasional flickering glances that Rodney kept darting across the table when he thought John wasn’t looking.

**~O~**

The strange glances from Rodney kept coming over the next few weeks, on the few occasions that John let himself look at Rodney just because he could; and each time, something hot and brittle would snake its way up his spine as he jerked his head away and pretended not to have noticed Rodney’s utter lack of social subtlety. The problem was, as wrong-footed as that shivery feeling made him, it was addictive, like the first sharp bite of water before you dived, exhilarated through a massive wave. John started to count how many times a day he could catch Rodney peeking at him like a perplexed cat – all sharp eyes and twisted mouth, followed by his usual startled blush whenever John caught him at it.

It was mostly under control, honestly, and dammit, John was used to pretending not to see what he didn’t want to see – give him a little more time and he could go back to that well-practiced ignorance, so finding himself trapped inside a flooding dirt cave on a crappy backwards planet with only Rodney for company absolutely, completely, and definitely for certain wasn’t going to make anything worse, period.

“Spears, homicidal aliens, and now death by flooded hole in the ground. God, how much worse can it get?”

“Shut up, Rodney,” John grunted as he tried once more to shift the utterly immovable mess of rubble and slurry that was trapping them in their little antechamber. “Haven’t you ever heard of tempting fate? You want the ceiling to cave in or something?”

“Now who’s tempting fate,” Rodney scoffed, but John could heard the slowly building traces of hysteria in his voice. “God, it’s the Puddle Jumper all over again.”

John gave up trying to dislodge the rocks in front of him. If he were honest with himself, getting them to move could be just as disastrous as doing nothing. It was just… The idea of doing nothing…

He turned to face Rodney where he was crouched on the highest slab of rock within the tiny chamber, arms wrapped around his tablet as though it were a lifeline to the outside world. “It’s not the jumper, Rodney,” John said. “We’re not at the bottom of the ocean, we’re not going to freeze to death, we just need to find a way out. C’mon use that big brain of yours and help me.”

Rodney blinked at him a few times, his hair plastered miserably to his head. “We can’t get any kind of signal through to the surface, you can’t move those rocks, the water is coming in faster than we can stop it, I— there’s nothing…”

“There’s _something_ ,” John replied in that special tone that brooked no argument from the lower ranks. “There’s always something. We’ve got time, so _think_. I’ll keep testing the walls, see if I can find a weak spot that won’t bring everything down on us.”

Rodney blanched at that, but turned back to his tablet all the same, wet fingers squeaking across the waterproof cover. “There’s no chance of a signal—”

“So don’t try and send a signal, do something different, think outta the box. That’s what you’re good at.”

“John, I—”

“Don’t talk, McKay. Think.”

It was a little harsh, and John could hear Rodney’s bitter huff of breath behind him as he carefully probed the walls lit by the flickering light of his P90’s torch, but an angry and working Rodney was better than a panicking Rodney who was saying… whatever it was that he’d been trying to say any day.

The wall in front of him suddenly gave a little beneath the probing of his combat knife, and John scrabbled at the gritty wall with both hands, letting his knife fall into the water that was swirling around his thighs. Huge chucks of glittering, mica-streaked mud and rock came away beneath his grasping fingers, and John was about to turn around and call Rodney over to help, when there was a shout.

“Sheppard, no! That wall is—”

Anything else that Rodney was going to say was lost beneath the terrible bass rumble of the ground, the walls, hell, _everything_ shifting around them. John lost his torch to the first fall of rock, and his state of consciousness to the next. He must have only been out for a few seconds, because suddenly he was face down in the water, choking on the mineral tang of the water. He spluttered to the surface and nearly concussed himself on the rocky ceiling that was now only two feet or so above the surface of the water.

“Rodney?”

Nothing. John felt his way along the underside of the uneven roof, hoping like hell that some part of the cave – Rodney’s part – might still have a higher ceiling.

“ _Rodney_ ,” he tried again, letting a little bit of command bleed into his voice. “Dammit, McKay, where the hell are you?”

There was a splutter from somewhere ahead and to the left of him, and John felt a panic he hadn’t known was rising in his chest settle a little.

“I— I’m here, Sheppard, I just can’t… Ugh, can you turn your light back on?”

“No,” John replied as he swam towards the sound of Rodney’s voice. “Torch got broken in the rock fall. What about your tablet? Do you still have it? That’d give us a little light at least.”

More ragged splashing. “I can’t find it. I think I dropped it when I—”

“Well, swim around a bit, see if you can find it. It’s probably just sunk to the floor nearby.”

Silence. “I can’t Sheppard.”

John rolled his eyes, thankful for a moment for the dark. “Come on, McKay it’s not that scary. There aren’t any sea monsters and the water’s still not even waist deep.”

“I _can’t_.”

“Why the hell not?”

“Because I _can’t move_!”

There was that rising panic again. “What do you mean you can’t move,” John said, feeling his way faster towards Rodney’s voice.

“The rock fall, it— My shoulder’s pinned up against the wall, and my arm’s in the water. I’m also pretty sure that the roof caved in at some point, because it’s pressing into the top of my head. It’s a little uncomfortable.”

The last was said at such a high pitch that John winced a little. His boots jammed suddenly up against what must have been the large rock Rodney had been perched on before the second cave-in. He clambered up, careful of the roof above him, and felt for Rodney’s body. Something soft and cloth covered met his fingers.

“Okay, I think I’ve found you,” John grunted as he pulled himself farther forward.

“Yeah, yeah that’s my left ankle. Which I think is sprained at the very least, so could you not… _squeeze_?”

“Sorry,” John jerked his hand away, realising that he’d been gripping onto Rodney’s leg like a drowning man, and all evidence to the contrary, he refused to go out like that. “Okay, I’ll look for the tablet, hold on.”

John searched across the slippery surface of the rock-face, but the tablet had obviously taken a dive into the water at some point. With a huge gasp of air, he dropped back over the side and ran his hands along the floor, feeling for anything that wasn’t fucking dirt or rocks. It took him four tries until he managed to find it. The screen felt cracked beneath his fingertips, but the waterproof casing seemed unbroken.

“Here.” He shoved it into Rodney’s clammy hands and moved to crouch behind him, running his hands across the broad expanse of McKay’s shoulders, trying to find the terrible seam between his skin and the fallen rock pinning him.

“Hey— No, I think… I got it, hang on.”

There was an intermittent flicker of light until it finally stabilised – an eerie, white-green glow that oddly reminded John of the tales of mermaids that lured men from the rocks and into the emerald depths of the sea. _No sea monsters here, remember?_

“Does it still work,” John asked Rodney, peering over his shoulder for a moment, before turning back to examine the size of the rock that had fallen on McKay.

“Mostly – not that it matters. At this point it’s nothing more than a glorified torch. Oh, that and it can tell just how deeply screwed we are by telling us just how deep we are under gr— No. No, no, no, wait. It can’t be that simple. Why didn’t I think to check that _before_ the ceiling caved in?”

“What? Think of _what_ , Rodney?”

Rodney laughed, but it was bitter and mirthless. “Positioning. I figured out we were four clicks away from the village, and that there were no other antechambers around this one that we could reach, but I didn’t think to check our depth.”

“How deep, Rodney?”

John got nothing in response but the random tapping of Rodney’s fingers against the side of the tablet.

“ _How deep_?”

“‘Bout a metre and a half, give or take?”

There were some colourful swears, a few of which John was particularly proud, before he could find the calm to refocus on the problem at hand. “Is there anywhere on this damn ceiling that I can dig without the whole thing coming down on us completely?”

There was a grunt of pain as Rodney shifted, trying to get comfortable. “There’s not a whole lot of detail available, but I’d try up against the walls somewhere. Don’t try anywhere in the middle.”

“Okay. We’ll get you free and then we’ll find out way outta here, buddy.”

“Yes. Yes, save me first. That sounds like a good plan, Colonel.”

John smiled, and slapped Rodney on his good shoulder. “Alright, let’s see if we can shift it at all. Get ready to move out of the way quickly if you get free, Rodney. Don’t want to free your shoulder just to crush your ribcage.”

“Lovely,” Rodney muttered, and John could almost see the pout on his face.

“Okay. One, two, three.”

There was a little movement in the rock, but any elation John felt was quickly dashed by the accompanying ragged scream from Rodney.

“No! No, stop, John!”

“Rodney, I’ve got to get this off you. The water’s still rising, and we don’t have a hell of a lot of time here.” The water was lapping around them now, breaching the height of the boulder they sat on.

“I know, I know,” Rodney panted. “I just don’t think— Maybe you should try for the roof first. At least that way one of us can still get out if you can’t—”

“Shut up, Rodney,” John all but snarled, and placed his hands back on the rock in preparation for another attempt at moving it.

“It’s not as if I’m happy about the idea, I just th— argh! God, no stop!”

But John didn’t listen, he couldn’t. He kept shifting the rock back and forth, ignoring the way Rodney kept pleading for him to stop, or swearing at him, threatening him with the sabotage of his racing car, until eventually, some small thing shifted and the whole wall was moving, rolling down and away into the water as John wrapped his arms around Rodney’s chest and dragged him back into the shelter of his own body to wait out the avalanche.

When it had all stopped, and they were surrounded once again by nothing more than the sound of gushing water, instead of the rumble of the earth, John let himself breathe, and placed a tentative hand on Rodney’s injured shoulder.

“How you doing, McKay?”

“Well, I’m not dead, and at this point I’m counting that as a win. Ugh, I think you pulled my arm out of its socket.”

John let himself have a moment of relief – just one, surely he’d earnt that – and dropped his head against the nape of Rodney’s neck.

“I’m pretty sure the rock did that Rodney, not me,” he murmured into his friend’s gritty skin. Rodney’s body shivered against his lips, and John leant back. “You cold, buddy?”

“Um, no… No, I just don’t feel great – you know how it is when you get crushed by a boulder. God, why am I joking about it, you probably know _exactly_ what it’s like.”

John scoffed. “Don’t you remember Michael’s secret base?”

“That was debris and scaffolding, not boulders.”

“And here was me thinking that being crushed was being crushed.”

“This is why you’re not a scientist.”

“Probably,” John mused, distracted as he let Rodney settle back against the stone and crept forward to look at the murky light that seemed to be coming from the now-gaping hole in the wall. “But I’d still say that I’m highly observant.”

He cocked his head at the light and watched as comprehension dawned on Rodney’s face.

“Holy crap. Trust you to manage to do both jobs in one go, Sheppard.”

John shrugged enigmatically before reaching back and helping Rodney onto all fours as best he could. “I try.”

Slinging Rodney’s good arm over his own shoulders, John grabbed Rodney around his waist, trying to take as much of his weight as he could while they crept towards the dirty sunlight that was peeking through the mud.

“We’ll need to go along for a bit and then up. When it gets tight I’ll go first, okay? Pull you up afterwards.”

Rodney was already panting for breath, and only nodded in response.

**~O~**

The light was beginning to fade by the time John pulled himself free of the ground to roll blissfully for a moment in the soft, green grass of a wide open field. He turned back to the dark hole he’d emerged from and reached down into its depths, fingers searching until Rodney’s strong, desperate grasp met his.

To say the next few minutes were… undignified for Rodney was putting it mildly, but none of it mattered as soon as John saw the setting sun touch his mud-streaked face, saw the relief in his eyes. They both lay there for a while on their backs, side by side, watching the first few stars appear in the darkening sky.

“See, Rodney? Piece of cake.”

John was pretty sure that if Rodney let himself look any more incredulous, his eyes would pop out of his head.

**~O~**

Now that they were back above ground the tablet could easily send a signal, and it was only half an hour or so before the Atlantis search parties found them. The Puddle Jumper, always a welcome sight, looked even better than usual, stocked as it was with dry blankets, food, and – for Rodney – pain killers that could floor an elephant. Happy for once to let someone else fly, John settled in the back section with a power bar and a thick, grey blanket, Rodney a warm mass pressed to his side.

“Mffank you.”

John quirked an eyebrow and turned to watch Rodney desperately trying to swallow the last of his own power bar before he made to speak again. “Huh?”

“I said, ‘thank you’. For, you know. Rescuing me a little bit back there.”

John tamped down the tiny thrill he felt at that and shrugged. “It’s my job, Rodney.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah. No, I know, but… Thanks anyway. I… don’t do well in small, dark, quickly flooding spaces.”

“It’s only a shame you weren’t concussed as well, you could have hallucinated Colonel Carter again – that would have taken your mind off things.”

Rodney shot him one of those darting looks. “I didn’t need to – you were there.”

There was that strange feeling again, creeping up John’s spine like some terrible, alien paralysis. “What do you mean? I’m pretty sure hallucinating a hot blonde beats being stuck with your flyboy commanding officer any day.”

“Not when one’s a figment of my imagination, and the other actually has the ability to save my ass. Anyway, that’s not what I meant.”

“Well, what did you mean, McKay?” That feeling was spreading across his skin now, like ice, or fire, numbing the tips of his fingers and toes.

“I just meant, I— John.”

There was a sudden need for space, and John found himself sliding along the bench a little – just enough to put some distance between him and Rodney, although Rodney didn’t seem to notice.

“I’m not sure how to say this, I mean, I’m not even sure how I’ve managed to get to the point where I _have_ to say this. I can promise you that this is not a conversation I ever thought I’d be having, especially not with you, but… well, after today…” Rodney took a breath and steadied himself. “I’m pretty sure that I’m not alone in this… whatever this is. I get the feeling that you feel something too, and I just… I just have to ask…” Rodney trailed away, but he kept his eyes, those stupid, blue eyes fixed on John’s face. “I know that you’re Air Force, and I’m pretty sure you don’t have a history of anything other than, well, what my history’s been, but I’m also pretty sure that I like you as more than a friend, and I may get slightly jealous whenever the potential for you hooking up with some random space princess comes up, and I also might have thought about you in a not… entirely appropriate way while taking the occasional shower, and… I was wondering if you’d like to grab a drink or something. Or dinner? Or anything, really. With me, I mean. As a date.”

Here it was, then. The feeling that John had been shoving away for months now, revealed in all its terrifying glory. A possibility that John wasn’t even allowed to consider. John threw off his blanket and fixed his gaze on a point in the ceiling. Dammit, the air was getting close in here.

There was a nervous chuckle from Rodney. “Feel free to answer anytime.”

John tried to force Rodney’s words away, but his mind kept running over them again and again, connecting them to all of the strange moments he’d had with Rodney over the last few months. All those looks and strange non-sequiturs that he’d refused to examine more closely. His best friend had feelings for him, and, alright that was absolutely fine. He had nothing against… people who liked that kind of thing, but it just couldn’t be _him_. It had never been him. That didn’t seem to stop his mind from playing a disjointed, ticker tape of images behind his eyes – Rodney laughing at one of John’s jokes, Rodney and him lounging around together, watching some terrible eighties movie, watching Rodney as he tried to make mac and cheese without setting the mess on fire…

…Rodney asleep and peaceful, tangled up in the sheets of John’s bed, skin bronzed by the setting sunlight dancing through the windows of his quarters…

_God, no I can’t_. John jerked back so suddenly he slammed his head against the hull of the Jumper. Rodney reached out to grab his arm, but John wrenched himself away violently, ending up standing on the other side of the hold.

“John?”

John shook his head, looking anywhere but at Rodney. “I’m not sure what the hell you want me to say, Rodney. I mean, where did this even come from? You can’t honestly think that I’d be happy to hear this? I, I like women. _You_ like women. You’ve been smoking Ronon’s stash of ‘herbs’ if you’re imagining I gave you _any_ indication that I… I…”

He trailed off and ran his hands through his hair, sparing a glance at Rodney, who was looking as white as a sheet and decidedly nauseous. John tried to soften his voice, and silenced the part of his mind crying out that he was slamming the door on a chance with Rodney that he hadn’t even let himself hope for. “Come on, McKay. I’m an Air Force Colonel, I’m your commanding officer, I’m, I’m _straight_. What the hell made you think I—”

“—Enough, alright? E-enough.” Rodney’s voice was level, but acid-sharp. “I didn’t just, just pluck this out of nowhere, _Colonel_ , I had plenty of reason to think you— But it’s fine. I promise you that I can recognise a ‘hell no’ when I hear one. Just… stop fucking talking, please.” He looked up at John, his gaze as sharp as his voice. “Please? If you actually are my friend and I haven’t been imagining that as well for the last four years, can you, can you just do that?”

_Of course I’m your friend, Rodney, please_! John felt like shouting, but Rodney was already tucking himself away, shutting the world out like he did whenever he needed to concentrate on something without distractions, and John was left alone as the Jumper soared through the darkness of space, clinging to the dying hope that he hadn’t just destroyed the one thing, the one person that he’d promised himself he’d do anything to protect.

**~O~**

There had been no time to make things right when they returned to Atlantis. Rodney had stormed off as soon as he was released from the infirmary, and John had tried as best he could to give him his space. They could ease back into the swing of things when they’d both had the time to get over the shock of what had happened, what had been said. And it had been a shock for both of them, even if it had been for different reasons. All they needed was time, and then everything would go back to normal.

Except… Except that it didn’t go back to normal. Rodney kept avoiding John for weeks, and weeks turned into months, until everyone in the city stopped asking, half in jest, whether they’d fought over a girl, or over some half-baked theory of Rodney’s, and started to avoid talking to either of them about each other at all.

It’s not as though either of them were unprofessional. Staff meetings were short and to the point, and Rodney obeyed him for the most part when they were off-world, even if he did manage to do it all whilst exuding an aura of icy rage. If anything it was more efficient – less arguments, less debates, less petty, childish fights over who the best Batgirl was…

But it was as though the spark had gone out of their team – even Teyla and Ronon felt it. True, it mostly made Ronon threaten to shoot John and Rodney in turn, but after five months or so of bitingly polite teamwork, Teyla had taken Rodney aside and spoken quietly to him, and had then simply told John to be “patient and humble”. All of a sudden, Rodney was, occasionally, instigating stilted, banal conversations with John when they were off-world, or complaining about everything from the weather to the terrain, or suggesting team nights when they were back on Atlantis.

It was so much more than John had had for months, more really than he deserved, and yet he couldn’t help but focus on the fact that with everything that Rodney suggested, with all the time the team spent together, none of the old activities that he and Rodney had shared together were ever brought up. No virtual golf, no racing cars, no geek nights that were strictly between him and Rodney, because “woe betide anyone finding out you actually have a personality, Sheppard”. None of that had come back, and maybe it never would. There were moments when the idea of only ever being on vaguely friendly terms with Rodney made him feel vaguely nauseous, but whenever that queasy frustration welled up inside of him, he remembered Teyla’s words: patient and humble.

Dammit, it wasn’t so much to ask of him after how badly he’d reacted to Rodney in that Puddle Jumper – just to wait and let Rodney set his own pace. So John smiled or joked when it felt right, and kept his distance on the days when Rodney seemed to be looking right through him.

It was those days, the days when Rodney refused to really see him, that John realised just how much he missed his best friend.

**~O~**

The south pier pump had stuttered into silence, and John had spent the morning rerouting personnel and requisitioning various supplies to help manage the situation until the science team could get the pump working again. It was possible that he’d missed breakfast because of it, and he may have missed dinner the night before while finishing up reports, so when everything had been brought under control, he took the opportunity to head for the mess and grab an early lunch. He supposed it wasn’t that surprising that Rodney had decided on the same course of action, and they nearly ran into each other as they both rounded a corner near the transporter.

“Geeze, watch where you’re going you clod— Oh, Sheppard, it’s you. Sorry, I’ve just been yelling at a bunch of incompetent engineers, I’m not really—”

John waved him quiet. “It’s fine, Rodney. I’m just glad that you managed to wrangle them into a functional force. Zelenka told me that the pump would probably be down for most of the day.”

Rodney scoffed. “Well, I could have told you we’d get it done faster than that.”

_Yes, you could have_ , John thought plaintively, but he smiled instead. “Going to get lunch?”

“Er, yes. I’m not quite sure when I ate last, and I don’t really feel like fainting in the lab, so food it is.”

John nodded and gestured in front of them. “Shall we then?”

There was a second of hesitation on Rodney’s face, and it hurt a little to see it, but after a moment, he nodded and they headed towards the mess hall doors.

**~O~**

John sighed, and let his fork fall back onto his plate. “Rehydrated pork-like products again.”

“Mmm,” Rodney murmured non-committedly as he stabbed listlessly at his own meal. Eventually he dropped his fork too and looked up at John. “I saw that you beat my top score in golf last night. Didn’t know you were still playing that stupid game.”

“Gotta keep my eye in,” John replied.

“I’m pretty sure Stoltzsky is trying to beat your record. He spends more time in that computer lab than he does sleeping… Which is probably something I should berate him about at some point, I guess.”

“Says the king of nocturnal work.”

Rodney picked up his fork and jabbed it at John, pork-like meat flying off the tines as he made his point. “I have legitimate reasons for pulling all-nighters, and they don’t include trying to be the next Tiger Woods.”

John shrugged and gazed off to one side where the early lunchtime crowd was beginning to take over some of the other tables. “Just because you’ve given up the game, Rodney…”

“I’m on a break! I’m not retired! Stoltzsky won’t know what hit him, you wait and see.”

John tried not to smirk, honest to god he did, but he couldn’t quite manage it. Rodney narrowed his eyes.

“Oh, you think you’re so clever, Sheppard. Let’s see if you’re still smirking when I wipe the floor with your scorecard.”

“I’m not worried. I’ve played you, remember?”

Rodney leant back from the table and bit his lip, and for a horrifying moment, John thought he had overplayed his hand, but Rodney seemed more thoughtful than upset.

“Alright, then… Alright. Six o’clock tonight. Let’s see if your game is as good as you seem to think it is.”

So much hesitation over one little invitation. Shoving down the ache that he didn’t deserve to feel, John managed to plaster his usual laconic grin on to his face. “You’re on, McKay.”

**~O~**

He trounced Rodney before they even reached the back nine – anything less than his best effort and Rodney would have called him on it. They exchanged their usual not-entirely-sportsman-like barbs of competition, and for a while, John could almost forget that anything had changed between them. By the end of the night, both of them were smiling more easily than they had for a long time, and a little glimmer of hope had rekindled itself somewhere deep inside John’s chest.

**~O~**

That glimmer stuttered a little when Rodney started to flirt with Keller.

John had to remind himself that he and Rodney were on good terms again – a little shaky a times, perhaps, but close enough to the friendship that they’d had that John refused to listen to the voice in his head whispering that he’d made a terrible mistake on that Jumper… And anyway, Rodney was supposed to want to date other p— to date women. That was the whole point that John had been trying to get across all those months ago, wasn’t it? So why did it feel as though something was still missing?

_Something. Huh. Well, there was a hell of a lot more than just ‘something’ missing now, wasn’t there?_ John thought to himself as he sat by Rodney’s bedside, pathetically grateful that the man had finally stopped panicking enough to go to sleep when John had come to sit down by his bedside, rested his hand on his broad chest, and promised that he wouldn’t leave his side, even when he fell asleep.

Man. Rodney wasn’t even that anymore. No, now he was just a scared little boy, clinging with a hopeless determination to the last few islands of sanity in his life: his name, his home, the twelfth decimal place of pi…

And John.

God. Every time Rodney called out for him, every time that no one else but John was good enough to make him feel safe, feel better, John felt a sick thrill of gratitude in the pit of his stomach. _He still wants me, he still needs me_.

_As a friend_ , he would remind himself viciously. _As his best friend, and isn’t that what you wanted? Isn’t that a fucking miracle in itself considering what you’ve done to him_?

So John had stayed by his best friend’s side as everything he was slowly slid away, had run to Rodney when he’d called for him, had refused to say goodbye, because that would have been giving up and there was nothing in this or any other galaxy that could convince John that they weren’t going to find a way to save Rodney. Across time and space, and multiverses, right? What was some creepy little parasite against the will of Lieutenant Colonel Sheppard? Did the universe really think John would let Rodney go, would let him _die_ before John could tell him… could tell him…

“I can’t do this without you, buddy,” John whispered, leaning low over the bed. “Anyone else – Teyla, Carter, Ronon… I’d feel it, but I’d keep on going. ‘Cos that’s what I do.”

He sent a quick glance around the room to check that they were alone, before letting himself have this one, small moment of weakness, free of witnesses, free of judgement – even his own, even Rodney’s.

His skin was rough where his stubble was growing out, but John paid it little mind, letting his fingers trace their way along Rodney’s jawline, before burying them in the hair at his temples.

“But not with you, Rodney. Not with you. You’re stuck under my skin, and I really can’t imagine this place without you. I can’t imagine _me_ without you either, you self-righteous, egotistical, mystifying bastard. I… I feel something for you, Rodney, and not in the way that a best friend is supposed to. Not in the way that _I’m_ supposed to. And I kind of hate you for forcing me to see that, you know? And I hate myself for not having the guts to do anything about it, not even now. Just… just come back from this, and we can work it out together, I promise. Whatever the hell the ‘it’ is between me and you. Just don’t die, you stubborn son of a bitch. Don’t die on me.”

Rodney’s quiet breathing was the only response, but god, it was enough for John. Just that steady, living breath letting him know that he still had time to fix things, to show Rodney that – whatever cards they were dealt, he’d always be there for him.

**~O~**

“Impromptu cave brain surgery. I’m still not sure how we’ve all managed to survive out here for this long when we keep doing crazy shit like this.”

Keller laughed at John, but it was the shaky, ‘I’ve just survived a sudden firefight’ kind of laugh that he’d heard far too many times in his military career. “I should demand more hazard pay from the government, but I’m pretty sure we’re maxed out on that already.”

John slapped a hand lightly on her back. “All that matters is you got the job done, Doc, and with a steady hand. There’s not too many people that can keep that level of nerve out here. Rodney was lucky to have you as his spontaneous surgeon.”

She made a face. “The Spontaneous Surgeon. Makes me sound like I belong in a comic book.”

“Even better, you know how McKay likes his super heroes.”

“Yeah,” Jennifer rolled her eyes as she headed towards her office at the end of the infirmary. “Tall, busty and blonde.”

John managed to laugh as he turned away, but it sounded a little hollow, even to him.

“So, how long until the miracle patient can get outta here?”

Jennifer looked over to where Rodney was sleeping soundly in one of the infirmary beds. “Probably late tomorrow. I want to keep him in for observation overnight at the very least, just to make sure that there’s no lingering ill effects.”

“Sounds like a plan,” John replied, well aware that Rodney’s enforced bedrest was going to make _him_ restless long before it did Rodney.

**~O~**

John strode down the hallway towards the infirmary late the next day. Time to break Rodney out, before one of the other patients took matters into their own hands and smothered him with a pillow. Anyhow, it wasn’t really a break out – the way he’d been robustly complaining earlier that morning about what his ‘minions’ had been getting up to in his absence was evidence enough that Rodney was ready to be discharged.

“You can’t call them minions, Rodney,” John had remarked that morning, eating a cup of blue jello in front of McKay as untactfully as he could without resorting to outright teasing.

Rodney had glared at him, his mouth thin-lipped. “I’ll call them former employees if I find out they’ve done anything to my research, and don’t think I don’t get what you’re doing with that damn jello.”

John had only smirked and licked the spoon clean.

Now, he reached the end of the hallway leading to the infirmary, and was about to round the corner when the sound of Jeanie’s voice – soft but insistent – reached his ears. Well, he could come back later, no need to interrupt the only quality sibling time the pair of them were going to get for who knew how long. He turned to go when Jeanie’s words caught his attention and he stuttered to a halt.

“—You talked about him an awful lot, Mer. I mean, more than anyone else, even Jennifer. It was like he was the last thing you were trying to hold on to when you’d lost everything else.”

“So?” Rodney sounded trapped. “It’s Sheppard, he’s like, like a universal constant. He and pi were the best things to measure my declining intellect against. He kind of helped with that by refusing to let me say goodbye. Another universal constant – that man’s emotional constipation.”

A pause. “So… There’s nothing going on between the two of you? I mean, I know that you’re ‘as straight as dried spaghetti’—” Even John could heard the inverted commas from a room away. “—But you know that’s not the end state of spaghetti…”

“Yes, thank you for reminding me of that particularly pointless simile of mine.” Rodney’s voice was sour. “Me and J— Sheppard, it’s not…” John could feel his muscles tensing, as though he were waiting for a blow, waiting to have to fight or flee. “We…”

“…Make sweet love in the night time?” Jeanie suggested.

“God, no! We’re nothing like that, you hopeless gossipmonger. We’re co-workers and occasionally friends, and on a good day, he forgets to pretend he’s a brainless flyboy and we can actually have an interesting conversation that doesn’t involve football, or how to field strip a P90.”

“You’re telling me that he’s a brave, crazy-smart pilot, who calls you on your bullshit, and refuses to give up on you, and you don’t have a thing for him? Dye his hair blond and give him a pair of boobs and he’s dead on your type.”

“Firstly, I resent the implication that I’m that one dimensional—”

“—No, but you really are—”

“—And _secondly_ ,” Rodney sighed, suddenly sounding exhausted in a way John hadn’t heard in a long time. “It’s not as if I didn’t try to go there with him, I did, stupidly—”

“Ha! Totally called it.”

“And he shot me down so hard that I’m pretty sure I’m still full of shrapnel.”

“Oh.”

“Yeah, ‘oh’.” Rodney sighed again. “Look, he doesn’t feel that way about me, and I don’t feel that way about him, not anymore.”

Jeanie’s voice was solemn. “You don’t trust him anymore.”

“Trust him? No, I trust him, Jeanie, just not… like that. There’s no one that I’d trust more with my life. Honestly, I can’t imagine going anywhere off-world without him at my back. Well, actually he’s usually in front of me, like a bodyguard. I’m not stupid enough to risk myself in such a disposable position…”

“Mer…”

“Hmph. Yes, well. What I mean is that I trust my safety to him almost every day, it’s what he gets paid for. It’s his job. I just can’t trust him with anything else more… fragile.”

“Like your heart.”

“Ugh, you sound like a hallmark card. But yes. Overly sentimental lamentations aside, I— I trust Jennifer with my… love. She’ll keep it safe. More to the point, I think she _wants_ to.”

“Oh, Mer.”

There was the rustle of cloth as Jeanie presumably went in for a hug, and perhaps Rodney responded with his usual lack of physical and verbal grace, but John didn’t hear it. The walls were cold against his skin, and he could feel something black and sickly curling up painfully in the pit of his belly as he let himself slide to the floor. Jeanie might come past him any minute, and he knew instinctively that he needed to get up and get out of there as soon as possible. A protective sister and the guy who hurt her brother? Yeah, he was in enemy territory right now, no mistake.

He liked to think it was his years of training and experience that got him off his knees and to the transporter before he heard the first echo of footsteps behind him, but in the end, it was sheer stubbornness that got him through the doors before he could be seen, and sheer stubbornness that got him to his quarters without dropping the implacable façade of Lt. Col. Sheppard.

But it was sheer hopelessness that night in bed that kept him imagining Rodney standing over him, his blue eyes cold, repeating the same words over and over again.

_Like a bodyguard… It’s what you get paid for. Like a bodyguard… It’s what you get paid for…_

_I don’t feel that way about you, Sheppard, not anymore._

**~O~**

Life became spectacularly unbearable after that. John could see it so clearly now – the wound that he’d caused, the scar that Rodney still carried. It was as though a part of their friendship had been severed all those months ago. It had healed slowly, cleanly, but it remained severed, and now all that was left to John was the small amount of trust that Rodney deigned to give him.

It should have been enough; instead it only highlighted how shallow their friendship had truly become. There were no more late night talks about everything from the bizarre to the overly personal – only friendly chats instead about Atlantis, or their latest mission, perhaps the occasional movie reference. It was warm and pleasant, and so utterly unlike what he and Rodney had been before that it made John want to shoot the wall.

Missions became that much worse as well. Instead of concentrating on the task at hand, John often found himself analysing Rodney. When a priest on Morvana – a tiny, shamanistic world – had told the team that a kiss was required to start the festivities, looking hopefully between John and Teyla, John had flicked his gaze over to Rodney in order to gauge his reaction. There had been nothing more than the usual McKay ire at being forced into another pointless native ritual. When, on another planet, John and Rodney were given shared quarters on the assumption that – as perfect examples of the clan’s Warrior and Academic archetypes – they must be together, Rodney had laughed and had easily corrected the mistake. John had smiled along with it, but his grip had tightened where it rested on the butt of his gun, and he hadn’t quite managed to make the joke at their own expense that Rodney had so obviously been waiting for.

Atlantis wasn’t much better. After a few months of increasingly tense silence between her and Rodney, Keller had called time on their relationship. Rodney had seemed a little lost at first in that particular way he sometimes got when things went wrong and he didn’t quite know why, but any stupid little hope that John had held about Rodney turning to him for support, for a shoulder to cry on, hell for _anything_ was quickly dashed – their conversations were as empty as ever, and Rodney continued to brush off any assumptions about the two of them from off-worlders with an ease that John was almost jealous of.

John’s own moment of ‘calling time’ came a handful of months after Rodney’s break up. AR-1 and Woolsey had returned to Morvana in order to participate in the great festival of the season, and to cement the alliance that Woolsey hoped would establish a more reliable source of food for Atlantis. The leader of Morvana, informed perhaps by his head priest of John and Teyla’s reluctance to kiss, and having watched Rodney complain to John (as only Rodney could) about how far they’d walked, how hungry he was, how much his feet hurt, declared to them in no uncertain terms that it was sacrilege for two ‘sullied’ to defile the feast by sitting at the tables. If the Colonel and Doctor McKay were indeed… together… then they would have to eat standing up and away from the others. Normally, they would be banished entirely, but in the hopes of an alliance, the Morvans were willing to make this small allowance.

There was stunned silence for a moment after the leader had finished speaking, the head priest a sickeningly proud and satisfied figure looming behind his superior. Even Woolsey seemed to be at a loss for words. Not so McKay, apparently. John turned to look at him when, with a snort of derision and a roll of his eyes, he began to speak.

“Putting aside your rampant homophobia for a moment, in no way am I and the Colonel ‘together’.” Rodney spared a light-hearted glance at John, as if to say, _can you believe these guys_? “Sheppard is like an annoying brother who thinks that he can boss me around like I’m twelve. Think of him like an overly-enthusiastic body guard.”

The words sent chills through John’s blood, and a terrible, choked sound escaped from his mouth. He managed to morph it into a humourless chuckle before it tailed away into awkward silence. “That’s what they pay me for,” he finally managed to say, a little strangled, and Rodney turned back to look at him for a moment, a puzzled look on his face. “Besides, bossing you around is half the fun of this job. Watching you try to run is the other.”

It was a little too sharp, perhaps, as jibes went, and John could see it hit home when Rodney hunched in on himself just a little. Still, it was almost worth it to see a real reaction to something John had said – anything other than the banal smiles and empty friendliness that he’d been getting.

Fuck. When had he started obsessing so much over Rodney? And just how much had his work suffered, had the safety of Atlantis and its people suffered because of it?

“Well, if that’s all settled then shall we sit down, Your Highness?” Woolsey suggested, cutting through John’s unwelcome revelation, and the group took their seats at one of the long tables that had been set up in the field by the village.

Neither Rodney nor John tried to talk to each other for the rest of the visit, and when they finally returned to Atlantis, John kept his silence, and returned to his quarters as soon as he could get free of the infirmary.

**~O~**

Sam had kept up her correspondence with Atlantis as best she could when she’d returned home, and John received a video message from her every other month when time allowed. He wasn’t quite as good at responding to her, but Sam had known him for long enough that he figured she wasn’t too offended by his laziness.

“…and now we have to figure out who’s going to replace him. I mean, I’d love it to be me, but with my new duties, it’s just not feasible. Still, I think the SGC will be in good hands with Cam, I just hope that they can find someone with enough experience to head SG-1.”

_Wait, what was that_? John skipped back on the recording.

“He’s off to Washington, and so they’ve offered Cam General Landry’s position. We’ve managed to convince him to take it – he didn’t like the idea of giving up the Gate travel, but the idea of getting an unknown in the chair, well… He came around.” Sam smiled. “The problem is, that’s all sorted, and now we have to figure out who’s going to replace him…”

The recording kept going, but John’s mind was already elsewhere. It would be a way forward – not the same as Atlantis, sure, and he’d miss… Well, there were things he would miss from the city, but it would mean that he and Rodney could stop crashing against one another, stop injuring themselves against each other like birds against a windowpane. And he’d still be able to Gate travel, he’d still be in charge of a flagship team, just a… different one.

It would hurt. Fuck yes it would hurt, but things just couldn’t keep going the way they were now. John could admit to himself that he didn’t operate at full capacity when Rodney was around – and considering that he was always around, that was a significant problem. If John couldn’t focus properly on his job, then he put Rodney, and his team, and Atlantis at risk. That was something that just couldn’t continue. If John couldn’t find a way to get past this… this _injury_ that he’d inflicted on himself and Rodney, then he needed to make the tough choice. He wouldn’t be able to protect Rodney anymore, but at this point he was probably doing more harm than good anyway. One of them had to leave, and John had known for a long, long time that Atlantis needed Rodney far more than it needed him.

**~O~**

Woolsey had given John the confirmation of his transfer order earlier that morning, reminding him once again that he only needed to ask, and Woolsey would find a way to keep him here, “because Atlantis needs you, Colonel.” John had only nodded benignly, and Woolsey had sighed in resignation before turning away with an aborted pat to John’s shoulder.

Now it was time for the afternoon meeting for the heads of staff, which these days seemed to also include Teyla more often than not, and John was more than a little tense. Woolsey had suggested that John let his team know about his departure before the meeting, but like always, he’d found silence his best form of defence. The inevitable upset and the demand for explanations was something he’d rather avoid entirely. He just wanted it all to be done.

“And finally, I have the transfers for the next two months,” Woolsey concluded, pulling John from his reverie. “Sergeant Pattersley, Airman Holdings, and Miss. Prichek will be rotating in, and Corporal Kelty, Mr. Reyes, Ms. Singh, and Colonel Sheppard will be rotating out.”

Everyone around the table froze, and turned as one to look at John, everyone that was but Rodney, who nodded, and waved the information away with a hand. “Fine, fine, now just—” He stopped abruptly, his hand frozen in mid-air. “Wait, what? Who’s leaving?”

Woolsey sighed as though he were bracing himself for something truly unpleasant. “Kelty, Reyes, Singh, and Colonel Sheppard are returning to Earth, Doctor McKay.”

“What? Which Colonel Sheppard?”

John closed his eyes and tried not to smile fondly. Only Rodney.

“There is only one Colonel Sheppard on Atlantis, Doctor, I think you know that.”

Rodney looked between John and Woolsey. “But that doesn’t make sense, Sheppard can’t go back to Earth, that’s beyond stupid. What idiot requested that transfer?”

“This idiot,” John replied, sitting up straighter in his chair. “I’m going home. I miss Earth, I want to reconnect with my family, find new challenges, etcetera, etcetera.”

Rodney stared at him. “But, but… I… That doesn’t make any sense. You don’t even like your family, and you never talk about missing Earth.”

_How would you know_? John thought to himself. “It’s time, McKay. A bit of fresh blood here, and I get to go back home and lead SG-1.”

“What, AR-1 not good enough for you?” Rodney replied, biting.

“It’s not about that, Rodney,” John said softly, painfully aware of their audience.

“Then what _is_ it about?”

“I just told you.”

“Bullshit,” Rodney spat. “You’ll never leave Atlantis, none of us will. It’s our home, our work’s too important.”

“ _Your_ work is important, Rodney. I’m just a bodyguard, remember?”

Rodney looked as though John had hit him, and John took the chance to make his escape. He turned to Woolsey. “If that’s all Sir, I have reports to fill out.”

Without waiting for a reply, John stood up and strode out of the room, heading as far away from Rodney as he could possibly manage without actually jumping into the sea.

**~O~**

By the time John finally did run into Rodney, it was in the mess hall three days later, and through the power of denial that could only come from the McKay brain, he had decided that John wasn’t really going, that something would come up to change his mind, or that the whole thing was some bizarre sort of military exercise. All that seemed to matter to Rodney was that John definitely wasn’t leaving, and for a moment, John felt the spark of their old friendship reignite. _I save you, you save me, that’s how it goes_.

“I said to Zelenka, it doesn’t matter if the coupling holds, the calculations are so far off that they’ll fry the system as soon as you say, ‘please, Sir, can I have some power?’.”

John smiled and leant back in his chair, taking a bite of his apple, happy to let Rodney keep on ranting from now until the moment John walked back to Earth through the Gate. Sadly, it wasn’t to be. The news of his departure had gone public that morning, and ever since, people from all over the base – some of whom John had struggled to put a name to, to his embarrassment – had been coming up to him to thank him, or to wish him well, or just to reminisce over how far they’d managed to come since they’d all walked through the Gate nearly five years ago.

One of the Marines was coming up to their table now, an apologetic smile on his face. John let the legs of his chair fall to the ground again, and smiled politely back at the Sergeant as across from him, Rodney’s blabbering came to a sputtering halt.

“Excuse me, Sir, sorry for interrupting. I just wanted to say how much of an honour it’s been to serve under you these last three years. I wasn’t here in the beginning, but I’ve seen first-hand how much you’ve done for the expedition, how well you’ve looked after the men and women under your command. I’ve had some, ah… difficult COs before, but you, Sir, you’re… All I can say is, I hope our next commander is as good as you.”

John could feel himself blushing, and he waved away the Marine’s praise with a self-deprecating hand. “Thank you, Sergeant Miller, it’s ah, it’s been a pleasure.”

“He’s not actually going to leave.”

John and the Sergeant turned around to see Rodney sitting, arms crossed, with a mulish expression on his face.

“I’m sorry, Sir?” Sergeant Miller said, eyes crinkling in confusion.

“You all need to stop bothering the man, it’s all just pie in the sky military stupidity. Nothing will come of it.”

“Sir?” the Sergeant was looking at John now, and John shook his head.

“Ignore him, Sergeant. And thank you for taking the time to come over, I appreciate it.” The Sergeant nodded, a little hesitantly, and then walked away back towards his table.

“What was that?” Rodney asked him sharply.

“I was about to ask you the same thing,” John replied. “You can’t keep contradicting me, it’s going to confuse people.”

“Not as much as you insisting that you’re going to leave us— to leave, and then suddenly, you know… _not_ leaving.”

John could only roll his eyes and pretend like hell that he wouldn’t miss this, miss Rodney’s bull-headed approach to people when he was gone.

Throughout lunch, people continued to tricked past John and wish him well, or thank him. Each time, Rodney would give him his opinion on the matter in shorter and shorter tones, until finally, when they were almost finished with their dessert, Rodney finally snapped.

“Look, I don’t care how much of a fucking _honour_ it’s been working with him, he’s _not leaving_!”

The mess stilled, and Rodney looked mortified for a moment, before he flushed an angry red, and slammed his tray down on the table. “Enough of these idiots,” he mumbled, not looking John in the eye as he stumbled to his feet. “I’m going to go and check on the other idiots in the lab.”

He strode out of the room without another word, and slowly, the noise level returned to normalcy for a busy, lunchtime crowd. John sat for a few moments longer, trying to figure out just how he’d managed to screw his life up so badly.

**~O~**

Colonel Amberhill arrived a month before John’s departure, and Rodney hated him on sight. The colonel was, perhaps, a little bland, but he seemed to be competent enough from what John could tell. Still, Rodney took every opportunity he could find to complain about the man when he wasn’t around – “He’s too straight-laced, he’s stupider than the airhead military usual are, he refuses to understand why I need twice as many rations when I’m off-world…”

John would only roll his eyes and tell Rodney to suck it up, and Rodney would let himself wind down to a grumbling halt.

“Well, a t least he’s only here for a month.”

“No, that’s me,” John would reply, and Rodney would shoot him a black look before returning to whatever task he’d been working on.

It all came to a head at John’s farewell party. Woolsey had asked John what he wanted to do, and John, well aware that his hope for ‘beer and pizza on the pier’ was a pointless one, ended up suggesting a buffet and a bit of music instead. Trading with the natives of the Pegasus galaxy had been good the last few months, and there was plenty of food and ornamentations to go around. By the time people had finished decorating the mess hall it looked like something out of a Bing Crosby Christmas album. The only saving grace was that Woolsey had suggested black tie, instead of uniforms for the party. John sensed Teyla’s hand in that, but whatever the reason had been, he was grateful. For some reason, farewelling Atlantis as Colonel Sheppard felt wrong. He was glad that he’d be able to say goodbye as John instead.

The party went off without a hitch for the most part. It felt as though John had danced with every woman on the base by the time everything began to wind down, and he sat, the collar of his shirt unbuttoned and his tie long gone, with the rest of AR-1 against one of the windows that looked out over the setting sun.

Anyone who was anyone had come over to say their final farewells to John, and Rodney – who had been less than friendly for most of the party, turned decidedly redder with every farewell.

Teyla drained the last of her drink and stood, Ronon following swiftly behind her. “I believe I will retire for the night, John,” she said, and John nodded, the warmth of the alcohol keeping him lazy and relaxed. “I know that we will see each other again before you leave, but I would like to thank you now for everything you have done for me, my family, and my people. The galaxy will be poorer for your absence.” She bowed formally, and John struggled to sit upright in order to return the gesture.

“You shouldn’t be leaving, but I get it,” Ronon said as Teyla turned to leave. “Some battles take too much out of you, and this isn’t your home.”

“You don’t— You know that I wouldn’t leave if I felt like I had any other choice, right, Ronon? Anyway the fate of the galaxy doesn’t rest on my shoulders, I’m pretty sure it’s a team effort. You guys’ll be fine.”

“Yeah, probably, but no one lets me beat them up like you do,” Ronon replied, a feral grin on his face.

John grinned back, and was about to reply, when Rodney, who had been unusually quiet, spoke up.

“You two need to stop buying into his bullcrap. He’s not going anywhere, it’s ludicrous. I mean, what the hell would he do back on Earth? And don’t give me that crap about him reconnecting with his family. This is all just some bizarre Air Force training thing. Do you really think that they’d just let the strongest gene carrier here leave? It’s idiotic, it’s unbelievable, and it’s not FREAKING FUNNY ANYMORE!”

The few partygoers still left stared at Rodney as though he’d just grown a second head, and quite frankly, John couldn’t blame them. Ronon was watching the now furiously blushing scientist with a mixture of humour and his usual level of McKay sufferance, but Teyla seemed to be watching Rodney with something perilously close to pity.

For a moment, Rodney simply gaped at his team, his mouth open like a landed fish, before he dropped his drink on the table beside him, and stumbled out of the mess.

“Rodney…” John called out, but Rodney barely flinched in recognition and kept walking. John turned back to Teyla. “I don’t know what he wants me to do. He’s known I’m leaving for months now, he just won’t accept it.

Teyla smiled at him sadly. “Perhaps it is not so much that he will not, but that he cannot, John.”

Her gaze was too knowing, too cutting. John narrowed his eyes and nodded sharply at Teyla and Ronon, before turning to jog after Rodney’s retreating form. He rounded the doorway of the mess in time to watch Rodney disappear into one of the transporters. John called out to him again, but the doors were already closing, and by the time he reached them, Rodney was gone.

John stepped into the empty receptacle and studied the map that was etched onto the rear wall. “Where would you go, Rodney?” he murmured to himself as he ran his fingers across the lines and figures of the map. Not to his quarters or the lab – too obvious, and John had the feeling that Rodney didn’t want to be found. He closed his eyes and let his mind drift along the strange connection that he had to the city. “Where is he?” he whispered. “Show me.”

Something drew his attention to an area in the northern region of the city, to one of the towers – the tallest in that section. John opened his eyes and pressed the symbol for the closest transporter.

The corridor he emerged in was lined with windows that looked out onto the vast ocean surrounding the city far below. At the far end stood a door – unadorned for the most part, but tall and elegant. It opened silently as John approached and he walked into what had to be the most stunning room in Atlantis. The floor was lined with sea-green marble, and at each of the cardinal points, every wall held a massive, full-length window, stained with the usual oranges and yellows of the city.

Rodney was standing silent at the western window, painted in the colours of the setting sun, his back turned to John. John could tell that Rodney knew he was there – the tensing in his shoulders, the sudden intake of breath.

“I didn’t even know that this room existed,” John murmured as he drew closer. “How did you find it?”

Rodney did nothing to acknowledge the fact that John had spoken, but just as John was about to give in and wrench Rodney around to face him, he replied.

“Masters was looking for somewhere to practice her dancing away from prying eyes. I found her a few options, but she didn’t like this one – too high up or something – gave her vertigo. I liked it though, so I come here sometimes when I want— I come here sometimes.”

John nodded, and then rolled his eyes at his own stupidity when he realised that Rodney couldn’t see him. He rested a gentle hand on Rodney’s shoulder instead and tried to ignore the flinch that it caused. Time to stop beating around the bush.

“I can’t stay in Atlantis, Rodney,” he murmured.

“Well, you can’t go back either,” Rodney retorted, turning to face him.

Go back. In time? John laughed, not a little bitterly. “Yeah, don’t I know it. There are just some things that you can’t fix, and you either get over them, or you get out. You got over it. This is me getting out.”

Rodney looked lost. “But I thought we were okay now?”

John shrugged and stepped back. “Whatever we are now, we’re not close, and I’ve realised that I don’t want to be alone, not anymore. You taught me that, Rodney. I want someone who I can trust with my love. Someone who’ll keep it safe. Someone who _wants_ to.”

For a moment, Rodney said nothing, the landed fish making a return performance. “You son of a bitch,” he eventually whispered. “That was a private conversation between me and my sister.”

“I know,” John replied. “But I needed to hear it. In the long run it’s better – no false hope. Rodney McKay telling it like it is, as always.” He smiled sadly at Rodney, who was looking more and more incensed, instead of placated.

“Hope?! What hope? That time I— When I confessed to you… You shut me down so fast that I nearly got whiplash! You wanted so desperately for everything to go back to ‘normal’ between us, and so I tried to give you that because I love you, you selfish asshole. And it’s still not enough is it? You can’t face me so you’re leaving.”

John sighed, one hand abortively reaching out for Rodney’s arm. “Do you know that Joni Mitchell song?”

“What, _You Turn Me On I’m a Radio_?”

John raised an eyebrow. “No, Rodney. _Big Yellow Taxi_. You know… It was like I didn’t know what I almost had until it was gone. I just didn’t want the parking lot of my failure shoved in my face anymore.”

“I think that this metaphor has taken a wrong turn somewhere,” Rodney replied, a little dazed.

“Probably,” John agreed. He rested a hand on Rodney’s shoulder once more. “But I’ll still miss you when I’m gone, buddy.”

Rodney looked belligerent. “Then don’t go,” he said. “Easy fix.”

John shook his head. “No, it’s not so easy, Rodney. Trust me. I think I’d rather be tortured by Kolya again than keep going on the way we’ve been.”

Rodney shrugged John’s hands away. “Yeah, you’re good at torturing yourself.”

“What?”

“That what all this is! Your defence mechanism when you think you’ve done something wrong.”

John stepped close to Rodney, letting his temper loose a little. “That’s because I _did_ do the wrong thing, Rodney! I fucked up so badly that even you – Mr. I Can Fix Anything doesn’t think that this is fixable.” He waved between Rodney and himself.

“You… I—”

Whatever Rodney was going to say was cut off by the city alarm.

“God, what _now_?” Rodney groaned as he and John raced for the transporter, reaching fruitlessly for their absent earpieces. By the time they reached the Gate Room, people were already at their stations, suit jackets and high heels discarded in the corners of the room.

“What’s going on?” Rodney demanded as they reached the balcony and Woolsey handed them both spare earpieces.

“Five separate generators have gone down simultaneously across the city, and the shield and cloak are currently unavailable.”

“That’s impossible,” Rodney retorted. “Those systems are completely unlinked for security purposes. The odds of them all going offline together are astronomical.”

“Exactly,” Woolsey replied, raising an eyebrow.

“Sabotage,” John stated, and Woolsey nodded.

“We’re not sure what the full situation is yet, Colonel. You take a team of Marines and check out the first generator. I have armed teams already heading for the others. Doctor, whatever’s been done to the generators, you’ll need to fix as quickly as possible—”

“Obviously,” Rodney retorted.

“Which is why you should join Major Lorne’s team – they’re already at the third generator and have secured the area. Take an escort and get there _now_.”

More’s the miracle, Rodney bit his tongue and simply nodded, sparing a quick, meaningful glance at John before he left.

**~O~**

The cascading failures only increased as the hours went on. John found himself jumping from crisis to crisis as they tried to hunt down the saboteur, whomever they were. At the twenty-eight hour mark, Woolsey began to order the use of stims for frontline personnel, which apparently included Rodney as well as John – that is if the mile-a-minute babbling John heard whenever their paths crossed was any indication.

Just when the last of Atlantis’ higher functions were about to fail, John’s team found the saboteur – a wraith, lurking in the lower levels of the city, using the air duct systems to move between the vital points of the city undetected.

There had been a moment – his reflexes dulled by the stimulants that overlaid his exhaustion – when the wraith had come at him, snarling, and John had lost his footing. He’d known that it was over, then. The wraith had borne down on him, its slitted hand outstretched, and all that had gone through John’s mind was, _damn, Rodney’s gonna kill me_. Then Ronon had come out of nowhere and wrenched the wraith away, slamming it into a wall, before dropping it permanently with a couple of rounds from his energy weapon.

“Nice timing, big guy,” John had panted as he was unceremoniously hauled up by his arm.

“You’re getting soft, Sheppard,” Ronon had replied, before grinning and holstering his weapon.

John had taken his team and continued to patrol the city as Rodney and the rest of the scientists slowly began to get the generators and systems back online, just in case the wraith hadn’t been working alone. By the time he was finally relieved, the stims were beginning to wear off, and John felt a little like he was swimming underwater after having voluntarily hyperventilated for a couple of minutes. Woolsey had already reminded him – rather sadly – that he was still scheduled to leave for Earth in a little over an hour, and with this latest disaster, their power levels were more precarious than ever.

It wasn’t as though he had a lot to pack. John stared at his quarters, at the almost bare walls, the sharp corners of his regulation-made bed, the guitar slouched against the window. It would take him ten minutes to pack at most, but it still seemed like an almost insurmountable task.

He’d managed to pull out his duffel bag and stuff in the few items he owned, as well as most of his clothes, when his door chimed.

“C’m in,” he managed to grunt. The door slid open, and Rodney walked in, white dress shirt and black slacks crumpled and dirty from the last forty-eight hours. He was off and talking long before the door closed behind him.

“I just thought I’d check whether you actually managed to make it home in one piece and not faceplant into the floor along the way. Jennifer says that you took more stims than anyone else did and—” He looked from the open bag on the bed, to the shirt that was bunched in John’s hand. “You’re _still_ leaving? We almost died a couple of hours ago, I’ve barely had time to remember that it’s okay to breathe again, and you’re actually going to head back to Earth forever like it’s just a walk in the park?”

“I’ve got no choice,” John growled in reply. “The Gate only opens once a month – you know our power issues better than anyone, especially now. Besides, Colonel Amberhill is ready to take over, and I’ve said my goodbyes. And it doesn’t take much effort to walk through a ring of water.”

“It’s not water,” Rodney replied, almost automatically, and John raised an eyebrow.

“I know, Rodney.” He finished shoving the last of his clothes in the duffel bag and then slung it over his shoulder. Ignoring the urge to look around his now starkly empty room, he made for the door, but Rodney grabbed his arm as he walked past.

“Please don’t go.”

John sighed. “We’ve been over this, Rodney.”

“John—”

“—You know, this all started because you called me John?” He turned to look at Rodney, who was watching him in an eerily similar way to a rabbit watching a hawk. “Well, no didn’t start – maybe just made me face what you were to me. Are to me. And then I couldn’t get you out of my head, but I couldn’t face what you wanted from me either… what _I_ wanted from you. I thought that being friends was enough, so I tried to get us back to that. Maybe if I were a better man I could just be that for you, but I’m not. I’m not that good. I can’t be like your ‘annoying brother’, and my… my feelings are affecting my ability to do my job, and this is not the kind of job you can half-ass, Rodney, you know that. I can’t jeopardise everyone’s safety.”

Rodney stood frozen, his arm still wrapped tight around John’s bicep.

“You need to let go of my arm now, buddy.”

“Don’t think I can,” Rodney replied, strangled.

“C’mon,” John murmured softly. “Walk me to the Gate.”

“Don’t think I can do that either.”

John exhaled sharply, the last of his patience leaving him. “God, Rodney, what do you want from me? We can’t be what we want from each other, and I can’t do the ‘just friends’ thing anymore, okay? This is not working for me. I made a choice all those months ago when you asked me… what you asked, and then you made a choice too. Now we live with them.”

“What if how we are isn’t working for me either?” Rodney replied, looking at the floor.

“All the more reason for one of us to get out of here.”

Rodney looked up at him sharply. “No, you idiot, I mean… Look, it may have seemed as though I’ve been doing fine, like I shrugged off your complete lack of interest in me like it was no big thing, you know: ‘take a chance and if you say no who cares’, but… it hasn’t been quite like that.”

John stared at Rodney, confused. Where the hell was he going with this? Rodney seemed to realise after a few moments of silence that he wasn’t going to get a response from John and sighed in defeat.

“ _Fine_. I stopped seeing you as, ‘hey, it’s Sheppard, my weird-haired best friend’, and stared seeing you more as, ‘hey, it’s Sheppard, my weird-haired best friend that I’m having strange thoughts about seeing naked’, around the time that I got trapped in that dead Jumper at the bottom of the ocean.”

“But… I though you said that you hallucinated Colonel Carter?”

“Oh, I did. I just… She kept me alive because she was the part of my mind that knew you’d come for me if I just held on long enough. That you’d save me. Again. Like always. I suppose that it all just got more intense from there, so by the time that you, erm ‘insisted’ that you didn’t feel that way about me at all, and that all of the signals I thought I’d been getting from you were all in my head… Well, I… protected myself. Didn’t actually stop me from l—” Rodney blushed. “From wanting more than you could give me.”

“But… what you said to Jeanie…”

Rodney scoffed. “It may have escaped your notice, but I’m not a huge fan of getting hurt, and I’m not the bravest soul in the expedition. You’d made your position embarrassingly clear – at least, I _thought_ you had, so I— I like to think of it as a ‘strategic retreat’.”

“You were scared,” John murmured, dropping his duffel on the floor by their feet. Rodney nodded miserably. “So was I. Nearly twenty years in the Air Force, an entire adult life of liking women, and suddenly I have the hots for my loud, brilliant, decidedly _male_ best friend? I was scared too, Rodney. I didn’t even know _what_ I was feeling until a couple of months ago.”

John felt something shift between them as Rodney stepped closer. “I don’t think I can do this without you, John.”

“Yeah you can,” John almost whispered. “You’re Meredith Rodney McKay, smartest man in two galaxies. You can do pretty much anything.”

They were so close to each other now, and in a few minutes Rodney would be so far out of his reach that the distance would be almost incomprehensible. What did all those boundaries John had put up around himself matter now? He let his hand stroke slowly down Rodney’s cheek, and watched as Rodney’s eyes slid closed. “You’ll be fine.”

Rodney, his eyes still shut, instinctively turned his face towards John’s. “Don’t go. Please don’t go. I’ll be whatever you want me to be – friend, fuck buddy… freaking trained monkey with dual PhDs, whatever. Just stay.”

“Rodney…” Did he really think that John could be that cruel? That’d he’d happily use Rodney without any regard for the man’s own feelings? He let his gaze flick down to Rodney’s lips, crooked as always, and slightly parted. If only it were as easy to show Rodney how he felt as it was with women – take them dancing, hold them close – then the kiss came easy.

John straightened as the beginnings of an idea began to coalesce in his head. “Come with me,” he said, grabbing his duffel in one hand, and Rodney’s arm in the other. Rodney’s eyes snapped open.

“What? Where?”

“Just trust me, will you?”

John led them to the transporter and keyed in the location of the strange, marbled room. When Rodney realised where they were going, he seemed even more confused.

“What are we doing here again?”

John didn’t answer him, dumping his bag instead in a corner of the room and rummaging through it until he’d fished out an iPod and a tiny little portable speaker. Skipping through his admittedly one-note musical library, he found the three classical songs that had somehow found their way on to the device and started playing the first one. It was a waltz, slow and aching, and oddly familiar. Placing the iPod on the cool marble floor, he carefully removed his shoes and socks, then stood back up and reached out a hand towards a decidedly suspicious-looking Rodney.

“You know I’m not good with words, Rodney. Just… trust me, this is better.”

When Rodney had finished removing his own shoes, John reached out and guided Rodney’s hand onto his shoulder, taking the other hand into his own, warm grip. Understanding swept across Rodney’s face, but John could still feel the tension cording his arms. He started to move them slowly around the room, trying not to wince every time Rodney stood on his toes, or tried to lead. Eventually though, the gentle sway of the music lulled them into a rhythm, and John could feel the two of them drifting closer together as they waltzed around the room, bare feet padding across the cool, sea-green marble. He could feel the heat of Rodney’s body bleeding through the infinitesimal space between them, the beat of his blood through the grip of his hand, and suddenly, the music meant something different, pulling John out of the dance steps and into something that only really existed between him and Rodney. The waltz began to beat a little louder, Rodney’s grip tightened, and his gaze finally rose to meet John’s as John pulled them both backwards, feet beating across the floor, his body shielding Rodney from whatever lay behind him as he drew the man along behind him, just like he always did, just like every mission they’d ever been on – pulling Rodney from place to place, protecting him, making him do better, _be_ better.

John let his hand tighten around Rodney’s waist, and drew him into a kiss. It was so easy, so beautifully easy, and the panic that John had still half-expected to feel never appeared. When they finally broke apart, Rodney looked as though he’d been hit by a two-by-four, but his hand had slid up from John’s shoulder to the nape of his neck, and his fingers were threaded gently through John’s hair.

“I’m kind of in love with you,” Rodney said.

“I kind of wish that I could go back in time eighteen months and tell you the same thing,” John replied, watching the fan of Rodney’s lashes against his cheek.

“Say it now, then.”

John flushed. “C’mon, Rodney, work with me here. I’m barely capable of saying that I love certain types of food, let alone people.”

Rodney rolled his eyes. “Well, at least you’re honest.”

John nodded. “I am from now on. When it counts. Rodney, I— I really love… y-yoghurt.”

Rodney worried at his bottom lip with his teeth, his fingers massaging the nape of John’s neck to the point that John felt in danger of just melting then and there. “Yoghurt, huh? Well, yoghurt can work with that for now, as long as we get something a little less… allegorical in the not too distant future.”

John smiled, and leant forward for another kiss. “I promise, yoghurt.”

Rodney jerked back. “And on no account is that to become a nickname, or I’ll send you back through the Gate myself.”

John felt his blood run cold and he dropped his hands from around Rodney’s waist. “The Gate. God, what am I going to tell Woolsey? Rodney, this might be unstoppable. I have to go through the Gate in—” He checked his watch. “Fuck. Fifteen minutes.”

Rodney paled and began to tug at John’s arm. “Come on then, you’ve got to tell him you changed your mind.”

John and Rodney raced barefoot to the Gate Room. The cargo and personnel that were travelling through the Gate were already assembled, and Woolsey looked more than a little relieved to see John career into the room, panting, duffel bag slung over his shoulder, and Rodney hard at his heels.

“Thank goodness, Colonel. I thought I might have to send out a search party.”

John nodded. “Sorry, Sir. I just… You remember that conversation we had about me changing my mind any time? Well, how about now?”

Woolsey looked shocked for a moment, and then more than a little resigned. “Perhaps a month ago, Colonel, but not with ten minutes to go before you step through the Gate.”

The tiny piece of hope John had sheltered in his chest withered away, and he could feel himself falling into the well-worn routine of his military transfers – nod, don’t speak, look obedient, go where they tell you to. He’d dealt himself this hand, and it wasn’t as though this would be a new experience for him – John had been screwing up his own life for years now.

Rodney on the other hand, didn’t look resigned, he looked downright panicked. “No. No, you have to do something, Woolsey, that’s what you’re paid the big bucks for.”

Woolsey turned to Rodney. “It isn’t actually, Doctor. Nowhere in my contract does it state that I am required to manage sudden changes of heart from Air Force colonels who ought to know better.”

Rodney opened his mouth, presumably to begin a rant of epic proportions, but John cut him off. “It’s okay, Rodney, we’ll work something out. We can stay…” he shot a surreptitious glance at Woolsey. “Friends – I can visit you, you can visit me…” Even to his own ears it sounded hollow.

Apparently, Rodney felt the same way. “I’ll quit,” he said abruptly, and John groaned.

“Excuse me?” said Woolsey.

“You heard me,” Rodney continued, looking nervous, but sounding more and more belligerent as he went on. “If John goes, I go, and you’ll lose the best mind you have in this galaxy, and with it any chance you have of this mission surviving for more than the next three months.”

There was silence for a moment, the nearby console operators doing their best to seem uninterested in the melodrama that Rodney was swiftly beginning to generate.

“I don’t believe that will be necessary, Doctor McKay,” Woolsey eventually replied. He looked over at John. “I didn’t want to lose you from the mission if I could possibly help it, Colonel, so I made sure that there were a few clauses in your reassignment papers to… help you out if the SGC turned out not to be a good fit for you. To be honest, I expected to use them _after_ you’d been back in Cheyenne for a few weeks – when you’d realised what you were missing out on here, but it seems as though I’ve underestimated your, ah… enthusiasm for the Pegasus galaxy. We might give it a few weeks before we let them know that you want to return, but then we can activate the option for a three month exchange between you and Colonel Amberhill, rather than a straight swap. It will give you both some experience and then we get you back.”

It was so much more than John had hoped for, and he could feel the relief flooding through his body, but Rodney looked incensed.

“Three months? Three months of Colonel Asspants? That’s—”

“— _Fine_ ,” John interrupted, shooting a warning glance a Rodney, who grumbled a little, but seemed to take the hint.

**~O~**

The trip through the Gate was odd to say the least. Only Woolsey, Rodney, Ronon, and Teyla knew that John was coming back, everyone else was still under the impression that this was the last they’d see of him. Rodney didn’t seem to know what to do as they stepped in front of the event horizon, and so John pulled him into an awkward hug.

“You better send something through the Gate every month, Sheppard,” Rodney whispered in his ear. “None of your usual inability to communicate, thank you very much.”

John nodded as they pulled back from each other, uncomfortably aware that it probably wasn’t going to happen. “Three months isn’t so long,” he suggested faintly, and Rodney nodded solemnly.

“Not when you consider the alternative, I suppose.”

John smiled. “So, you gonna wait for me, McKay?” The memory of how long it had taken him to come to terms with how he felt about Rodney, how long Rodney himself had needed to wait, rose up, unbidden, and he could see the same thoughts skitter across Rodney’s face.

“Yeah,” Rodney said softly. “I’ll wait.”

**~O~**

Three months later, John stepped back into Atlantis, a strange mix of elation and apprehension bubbling in his chest. It was just possible that he should have kept in touch with Rodney a little better than he had done…

“Earth’s fine, beer’s good, I love yoghurt, see you in two months?”

Rodney was standing just beyond the splash zone, arms crossed over his chest, a furious look on his face.

“Earth’s still fine, beer’s still good, I still love yoghurt, see you in _one_?”

John tried to keep the shit-eating grin off his face as he stepped towards Rodney, but it was a lost battle before it had begun.

“I’m amazed that you managed to find the impetus to come back at all!”

It was bluster, but John could hear the true note of uncertainty that lay beneath it. He let his usual, lazy grin spread across his face and slouched over to Rodney, letting his bag fall at his feet. Dropping his hands onto Rodney’s shoulders, he shrugged enigmatically.

“Ran out of yoghurt.”


End file.
